School Board Bans Contracts To Bus Firm That Paid Bribes

The bribes paid to a Chicago public school system official by the co-owner of Student Transit Corp. are coming back to haunt the North Side bus company-in a big way.

A school board committee voted Wednesday to bar Student Transit from receiving any future Chicago public school bus contracts and to cancel all present contracts by the end of this school year.

The action represents the strongest move yet by school officials in their efforts to crack down on bus firms and clean up the school system`s scandal-plagued transportation program.

The severe penalty, if approved next Wednesday by the full board, would cost Student Transit millions of dollars in business annually. The firm, located at 7240 N. Rogers Ave., has contracts for slightly more than $3.9 million in Chicago school system business in the 1988-89 school year.

On Feb. 27, Bernard Cohen, co-owner of Student Transit, admitted in federal court that he had paid an unspecified amount of money to Donald Sparks, the former head of the school system`s transportation department.

In his plea agreement, Cohen acknowledged that he ``made cash payments to Donald Sparks with intent to reward him in connection with Student Transit Corp.`s business.``

Cohen`s attorney Miriam Miquelon said Wednesday that neither she nor her client would have an immediate comment on the committee`s vote.

Originally, board officials had planned to make the prohibition against Student Transit only a year in length. However, the proposal adopted Wednesday by the board`s audit and finance committee is ``open-ended,`` said Orpen W. Bryan, assistant superintendent for school support.

The day after Cohen`s guilty plea, Sparks and Julius Polan, the former owner of Northtown Bus Service Ltd., Lincolnwood, pleaded guilty to a bribery scheme in which Polan gave more than $200,000 to Sparks and a board employee who was acting as an undercover government informant.

Bryan said the school system, which spends nearly $70 million a year on transportation, isn`t barring Northtown from future school business because Polan no longer has a financial interest in the firm.

The board committee postponed until May 3 a vote on lesser sanctions against three bus companies that were found in an internal audit to be overbilling the school system for transporting children to special education programs in private schools.

As punishment, Bryan said, the administration wants to prohibit the firms from receiving any three-year contracts for such programs, starting next September.

The companies would be permitted to bid on other transportation contracts, Bryan said, but, as a further sanction, they wouldn`t be permitted to receive any more routes than they had last January.

Board members identified one of the three firms as Windy City, one of several bus firms owned by Art Smith, a contributor to the campaigns of the late Mayor Harold Washington and outgoing Mayor Eugene Sawyer.

A draft copy of the internal audit, obtained by The Tribune, indicates that on two days last fall Windy City supplied a total of 39 buses to transport children to one private school, but then billed the school system for 48 buses.

The other two firms that face the sanctions haven`t been identified publicly.

Initially, school system officials were also going to sanction a fourth company, but dropped those plans after receiving an adequate explanation from the firm, Bryan said.